Remarried After I Secretly Divorced the CEO novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Third Anniversary
Ellery waits with dinner while Kieran is photographed at a gala, then slides divorce papers into his contract stack, watches him sign without reading, and leaves with one box until Victoria meets her in the lobby.
On our third anniversary, I set the table for two and waited.
I had made his favorite, a roast chicken with lemon and too much garlic.
I had lit the candles twice, because the first pair burned down while I watched my phone.
At nine, the photo went up on a society page.
Kieran Saxon stood at the Pacific Reach gala in a black suit, one hand at the small of a woman's back.
She was a blonde in green silk, laughing up at him.
The caption said, "Kieran Saxon and guest."
Not his wife.
Nobody had ever called me that in public.
For three years I had been the woman in the Queen Anne penthouse who did the dishes and drew his buildings at night.
Pier 9, Columbia Court, the Alder Street Hotel.
All of them were my drawings, and all of them carried his stepsister's name.
"Just until the Pacific Reach deal closes," he had said at the courthouse, holding my hand under the counter.
I was twenty-four and I believed in deadlines.
The deal had not closed in three years.
At one in the morning I blew out the candles and wrapped the chicken in foil.
I did not cry, because I had already done that in September.
In September I had gone to a lawyer in Fremont with a folder of three years of evidence and one question.
"How fast can I leave?" I asked.
She had slid a stack of forms across the desk, and I had taken them home and filled them in.
I put the forms in the bottom drawer of his desk, where I kept my pencils.
At ten to two, the front door opened.
Kieran came in loosening his collar, tired.
He looked at the table and the foil and the two plates.
"Is that dinner?" he asked.
"It was."
"I had the gala. I'm sorry, El."
"I know."
He kissed the top of my head and went to bed, and he did not say the word anniversary.
I stayed in the kitchen until it got light.
At seven, he came back in with his phone at his ear, shirt untucked, a stack of contracts under one arm.
Forty of them, thick as a phone book, flagged with yellow tabs where he had to sign.
He dropped them on the island and began to sign without sitting down.
Pen, flag, page.
Pen, flag, page.
"Tell Victoria I'll do the Meridian call from the car," he told the phone.
I stood at the other end of the island with the papers in my hands.
They were the last forms from the lawyer, and I had put a yellow tab on every page.
"These need you too," I said.
"Put them with the others."
I slid them into the middle of the stack.
My hands were steady.
That surprised me.
He signed the first page, and the second, and the third.
I did not see him read the title, which said in bold black letters that it was a joint petition for dissolution of marriage.
I did not see his eyes go to my name beside his.
His pen paused over the last line, and my heart climbed into my throat.
"What's this one?" he asked.
"The usual," I said.
He signed.
He capped the pen, and for a moment he looked at me, really looked.
"Don't wait up tonight," he said.
Then he kissed my forehead and went out with the phone against his shoulder.
The door shut behind him with a soft, expensive click.
I stood alone in the kitchen with the yellow tabs and the smell of cold garlic.
Then I got to work.
I pulled the petition out of the stack and took it to the courthouse myself, and the clerk stamped it in under four minutes.
"Ninety days," she said. "Then it's final."
I went home and took the cardboard box from the closet.
I put in my drafting pencils, a steel ruler, and a napkin with a building drawn on it in blue ink.
I left the dishes.
I left the ring in the little glass dish on the entry table, beside his keys.
I did not leave a note.
If he wanted to know why, he could read what he had signed.
The elevator took forever to come.
When the doors opened, Victoria was standing in the lobby, in a white suit, holding two coffees.
She looked at my box.
She looked at my bare left hand.
Then she smiled.
"Three years," she said, "and he never once said your name to anyone. Not even to me."
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